The Third Who Walks Beside You
by llethe
Summary: Death, he meant. Jason saw the faces of death.


Disclaimer: _The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy_, and _The Bourne Ultimatum _movies are owned by Universal. The title and subtitles come from T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland."

Summary: Death, he meant. Jason saw the faces of death.  
Characters: Jason Bourne, Marie Kreutz  
Category: Mostly gen, PG-13

**The Third (Who Walks Beside You)  
by llethe**

I. Of Thunder

"I can see their faces."

Death, he meant. Jason saw the faces of death.

It shook him. It made him human again, transformed him into a man she had met only a handful of times. He sweated and he shook and he was not in control; he was not Jason Bourne but the man left behind.

Between the cities they visited and nations they left, he tracked down the faces and found their names. He found their deaths and visited them, took their articles and stories for himself and his book of unremembered sins.

"I drowned him." Jason didn't lie about his past. "I stabbed this one." Jason didn't lie, and she could tell by the way his hands shook, by the breaks in his voice when he told her, by the shell-shocked presence he carried for days after a new discovery.

Marie didn't know what Jason thought he would find all that time, searching for his ugly answers. She had impulsively assumed it was all or mostly guns – something clean and Hollywood-justifiable, at least more than anything else she could imagine (but then, she wasn't the killer, so what could she imagine). Jason must have felt it, _that_ inside of himself, like he felt his languages and physical capacities. Like he felt everything else.

"God damn it, Marie, I ruined _lives_. I took _lives_."

She slept next to him, still. She laughed with him, still. She stayed with him, still.

II. Up the White Road

In the car, Jason looked at her, eyes wide and eyebrows raised. "I'm going to tell him. Everything. In case…"

In case they were being followed. In case this chance to see her brother and for Jason to meet a piece of her family backfired, her brother wouldn't need to ask why.

"I used to be an assassin for the CIA," Jason said to him. His voice was even and composure cool, as if he was over the part himself he could barely remember. "At any given time, we could be on the run again. I can't guarantee our lives. I can't guarantee yours."

On the way to Barcelona, Jason looked at her again, so earnest, like he hadn't changed into something of a new man after his would-be final encounter with Treadstone. "I don't believe anything is going to happen to you," he said. "If I did, I wouldn't be here."

Marie had lived in enough places, met enough people to spot the pitfalls of naiveté. And wasn't what he'd said one of the worst? But with Jason… With Jason, she believed it, despite the ever-present disclaimer that came with him.

One or two or three months later, Marie often left Jason to the creation of his book, to the past and to death, without often wondering if her face and her name would someday be left to the early morning hours and Jason's careful dedication to his mistakes and his guilt.

III. By This and Only This

"God damn it, Marie, I ruined _lives_. I took _lives_."

Once, Marie agreed. She tried to well sincere, long-lasting disgust for the man who paid his way into her life, but what came wouldn't stay. She relegated him to the floor and offered him no blanket, and all he said was that he wanted a life with her, away from the person he'd been.

Marie followed Jason to libraries and Internet cafes, whispered the through the bits and pieces he'd told her of the bits and pieces he'd dreamed. She helped him look for the names, hoping he'd find them, hoping he wouldn't, and not once believing that he was trying to find the man he'd been.

"Penance," he'd said once, voice low and uncomfortable. As if committing suicide into the Mediterranean hadn't been enough. As if he was the same man now as he'd been then. As if she would live with that, follow that through Europe.

As if Jason wanted to hear any of that, see anything but the faces of death. Not often did Marie wonder if she would one day top them all.

---

end

September 2007  
llethe / llethee (at) gmail (dot) com


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